Silence: A challenging but valuable discipline

Not long ago, I did an eight-day silent retreat. In my community we do this every year. Afterward I Tweeted out a short summary: “So often in prayer what really matters is something beyond words: the experience of God above what language can describe. I’d say the greatest fruit of my 8-day was being peacefully alone with God. That is so inadequate but language fails in describing God.”

A true thought, but far from complete. Some people assume that, as I am a priest, silence comes easily to me, but not to them. In reality, cultivating silence is hard for all of us.

But hard things are (often) valuable and worth doing. Nobody in society is going to get after my cousin for spending more than a decade to get a PhD – society realizes that although that’s difficult, it has value. Unfortunately, society often misses the value that comes from living the silence of a retreat.

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Fr. Matthew P. Schneider, LC

We love Jesus. Jesus loved us first. I want to help you experience Jesus and become his apostle. I'm a priest with the Legionaries of Christ ordained in 2013, living in the Washington DC metro area where I studies at STL and helps out with various ministries. I'm also one of the top priests on social media with over 40,000 Twitter followers. I'm originally from Calgary, Alberta, Canada, but I've worked throughout North America.

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